After introducing herself, Vicky started by explaining why Honeywell supports CAPE-OPEN among other technologies opening up UniSim® Design to 3rd party software. For Honeywell, it is a way to accommodate customers who are not relying just on a single process simulation but on several. It is also a way to let their customers introduce their own technology, in terms of thermodynamic models and unit operations, in their flowsheet simulations using UniSim® Design Suite. By allowing a single technique to interface a given piece of software with several process simulation tools, less maintenance is needed for their customers.
With respect to the CAPE-OPEN thermodynamic socket in UniSim® Design, the setup of a simulation using a 3rd party CAPE-OPEN Property Package has been simplfied compared to the original workflow. The same socket supports both versions (1.0 and 1.1) of the CAPE-OPEN Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification. Enabling version 1.1 has led to an improvement in flash calculations and a better way to query about the types of equilibrium calculations provided by a 3rd party CAPE-OPEN Property Package.
As a PME UniSim® Design supports the persistence of CAPE-OPEN Property Packages as well as the configuration, within UniSim® Design, of a Property Package if such a Property Package allows for it.
With respect to Unit Operations, UniSim® Design displays a socket for this category of PMCs. They can be dropped on UniSim® Design palette as any other unit operation from the library of unit operations. Both material and energy Ports of a Unit Operation may be connected to streams. Any Unit Operation may be configured from within UniSim® Design and its validation status is always displayed. UniSim® Design takes care of updating the list of Ports and of Parameters whenever they are modified through re-configuration. The display of Public Parameters of a Unit Operation includes the unit of measurement based on the dimensionality of the Parameter and the set of units selected in Unisim® Design. Conversion is also provided for. Persistence of a Unit Operation is handled by Unisim® Design as well as the diagnostics and logging functionality provided by CAPE-OPEN. CAPE-OPEN Unit Operations can access a Material Object of UniSim® Design either under version 1.0 or 1.1 of the Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification.
Public Parameters of any CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation can be used in adjusters and UniSim® Design forces the re-calculation of a CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation only if its feed streams have changed in state or an input parameter of the Unit Operation has changed in value.
UniSim Thermo may be used as a CAPE-OPEN Thermodynamic server. It exports CAPE-OPEN Property Packages compliant with version 1.0 of the CAPE-OPEN Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification. Honeywell Process Solutions also provides a Mixer – Splitter as a CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation, mostly as an example.
The presentation ended with a demo and a question/answer exchange.